I'm not sure if this counts as thread necromancy or not, but I am far too tempted to weigh in on this discussion, both due to being somewhat familiar with the matter (having been a fansub proofreader and currently a doujin scanslation proofreader, and this sort of topic has come up quite often) and being an outsider here - I threw my $20 at danbooru four-and-a-half years ago and have been reaping the rewards since, but haven't contributed or interacted outside of a tiny handful of minor translations. Perhaps I'm being presumptuous, but I think I can somewhat speak for at least some other lurkers.
Why did I throw my money at danbooru? Part of it was wanting access to more search tags (although I rarely need them) and part access to loli (although it's not hard to get elsewhere). So why invest in danbooru instead of just hopping over to an alternative for the things I couldn't find here? Because it meant a lot to me for it to all be in one place.
albert said:
Danbooru is a site for fans, not for creators. Losing access to art like that would drive me crazy. I don't want to have to manually download everything out of fear that the artist might one day want their art to disappear.
Knowing that I can "trust" one place to have it all rather than forcing me to scour the internet is a big deal. I would much rather scour a single site's fantastic and well-curated tags than an internet worth of torrents. Albert saying that line is frankly kind of heartwarming for me - it's good to know the person at the helm of a resource I value shares a sentiment I feel so strongly myself. The thought of possibly missing out on art that'd mean something - however slight and transient - to me is kind of scary. It's a modern privilege, sure, to know that the better part of humanity's art is at my fingertips, no money or effort needed - but having gotten used to it, I genuinely get a sinking feeling when I think I've lost it. And that's when the conflicts start.
There is a case of a doujin scanslation site (or two) going legit that mirrors this topic pretty well. Everyone happily calls them sell-outs, and in my compulsion to make sure I have access to everything, I went off to download and stockpile everything available to make sure I didn't miss out on something that I would find sweet and wonderful and re-read dozens of times. And then I kind of realized just how much stuff they got to put out - and they only got to put it out because of the money they make from going legit. It's usually not that crisply contrasted when "banned artist" is just a tag click away. But when I get to see the trickle of fan-scanslation doujinshi, and then look at the high-quality behemoth that is people getting properly paid for it, I get to appreciate what something like Patreon goes. It's a somewhat game theory-like thing. You have a choice to engage in rather soft piracy, choosing between getting all of the content or some of the content. But if everyone chooses to get all of the content the easy way, there's way less content because the artist needs to find other work - and everybody gets less art in the end than if they sat happily on the free releases, and the ones who really cared became patrons.
I can't act like I don't understand both sides, or genuinely sympathize with them. But push comes to shove, a lot of my life has benefited from piracy. From the games my dad burned onto CDs when we first came to America because we didn't quite have the money to get them all properly, to many happy memories reading visual novels I never would've tried if I had to pay money up-front. Having all of the art humanity has produced is a wonderful luxury, and it means a lot to me to keep that option. Some of the games I've enjoyed most, and ended up purchasing - I heard of from friends who pirated them. But I obviously can't guess how many things that I otherwise pirated I would've chosen to purchase if it wasn't an option. Perhaps not many at all, but at least a few, right? It still makes a difference in the end.
I didn't even realize what "banned" meant, that's how I ended up on this thread. I saw a bunch of high quality stuff (sakimichan's, not exactly my taste, but undoubtedly well drawn), saw the banned and patreon tags, and asked myself "what's the point of it being banned if I can see it anyway?" and eventually ended up in this thread as the answer.
These are just a bunch of thoughts. I'm sure most people have heard most, if not all, of these sentiments many times over, but I somehow felt the need to end my years of lurking for this one post. The difference between "all of the high quality art is on one website" and "almost all of the high quality art is on one website" is that nagging feeling in the back of my head of "But what if I missed something good? Really good? Think of all the things in my life that I luckily stumbled into and hugely enjoyed, and how much I'd hate to have not done so..."
I suppose it doesn't matter too much if it's Kerasu, since I'll definitely throw money at him someday and get access to that stuff, but what bothers me is the thought that there's an artist I'd like just as much, and I would never get to know their name or follow them, because I would've never seen that one illustration that pulled me in, because it wasn't included in a search it was relevant to because it happened to be a patreon reward from years ago... or something like that. I know it's an unreasonable modern privilege to want all the art available to me in an easy-to-search-through format, but given how perfect danbooru has been at scratching that "but I'm not missing out on something really good, am I?" itch thus far, I'd hate to see it stop. I'm definitely not the only one. I'm not sure if I've said anything useful to anyone, but I hope I've given some insight into the mind of a person that danbooru means a lot to.